The Choice of Magic - Michael G. Manning Page 0,54
later, Will’s exhaustion faded.
“In the presence of higher concentrations of turyn, you can recover much faster,” declared his grandfather. He snapped his fingers and released Will then.
Sitting up, Will brushed the dirt from the back of his tunic and gave the old man a sour look. “Every time we have a discussion, I wind up frozen while you perform experiments at my expense.”
“All in the name of education,” said Arrogan. “Besides, training an apprentice is a real pain in the ass. The only bright spot is that I get to have a little fun now and then.”
Back on his feet, Will still felt tired, but it wasn’t anything he couldn’t deal with.
His grandfather pointed at the jar that supposedly contained troll urine. Will still hadn’t decided whether he believe him on the identity of the contents, though. “You’ve had enough training for one day. After you spread the troll piss around the garden, you can rest for the afternoon.”
“Yuck,” commented Will. “I think I’d rather train.”
The old man shook his head. “So far we’ve only talked about turyn and its source, but there’s another important factor, something I call ‘will.’ Your will is a lot like a muscle. Training it to control your source makes it stronger—performing magic makes it stronger—but it has a limit. Push yourself too hard for too long and your self-discipline will crumble.”
“How do you know when it’s running out?” asked Will.
“You get irritable,” said his grandfather. “Easy things seem difficult. Your mind feels fuzzy. That’s if you’re lucky enough to notice in time. Sometimes it falls apart so quickly that by the time you realize you’ve overdone it, it’s too late.”
“What happens then?”
“Depends on what you’re doing at the time. If it’s something big, the result can be bad, or even fatal,” said Arrogan.
Chapter 18
Summer passed into winter, and Will turned sixteen without much fanfare. He wasn’t even sure if his grandfather knew when his birthday was. The old man had never asked, and Will never brought it up.
Will went through two more cycles of having his turyn forcibly reduced, and while it was unpleasant each time, it was never as bad as the first had been. The flame on his candle was no longer even a flame—it more resembled an ember, much like his grandfather’s. He hoped that meant he wouldn’t have to go through any more compressions.
“We’re done squeezing the life out of me, right?” asked Will, as the next summer drew to a close.
“Yeah,” said his grandfather. “No one’s ever gone farther than that, though I’m tempted to try since I have you as a test subject.”
“Why haven’t they gone farther?”
“They all died,” said Arrogan in a bland tone. Then his eyes lit up. “I’m game to try, though, if you want.”
Will gave him a sour look. “No thanks. Does this mean you’ll be taking the spell-cage off soon?”
“Hah!” barked his grandfather. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? You lazy little prick.”
Will sighed. “I knew it was too much to hope for. What’s next then?”
“Well, since you’ve got enough nerve to ask, you must be ready. Next, you’ll learn how to increase your available turyn,” said his guardian.
“You have to take the spell off then,” said Will. “I have to keep my source tightly clamped off as long as it’s in place.”
“That’s where you’re mistaken. The turyn you use now doesn’t come from your source. Your body has learned to maintain itself without your source. What you’ll do next is increase what you draw from your environment.”
“This is going to hurt, isn’t it?” said Will bleakly.
“It shouldn’t,” said Arrogan, “but I wouldn’t put it past you to screw it up somehow.”
“Can I ask what the point of this is?”
“You can ask, but it won’t help you succeed, and you wouldn’t understand either, so don’t bother. It will make sense later. What you need to do is push your turyn outward, sort of like you did when you healed that boy.”
It sounded simple. “That’s it?” said Will.
Arrogan just smirked. “Try. We’ll see how far you get.”
An hour later and Will wanted to pull his hair out. No matter what he tried, nothing happened. It wasn’t that he was struggling with a difficult task—he couldn’t even begin, and his grandfather’s advice was worse than useless.
“Imagine it flowing out through your hands. That helps some people,” said the old man. When that didn’t help, he offered different instructions. “Think of it like an empty wineskin. You’re trying to push your breath out and inflate it.”